. . . dogme 95

thomas vinterberg (2nd from the right) at the press conference for the london film festival

Dogme 95: The Vow of Chastity (abridged):

I swear to the following set of rules drawn up and confirmed by
Dogme 95:

Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in.

The sound must never be produced apart from the image or vice-versa.

The camera must be handheld. Any movement or mobility
attainable in the hand is permitted.

The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable.

Optical work and filters are forbidden.

The film must not contain superficial action.

Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden.

Genre movies are not acceptable.

The film format must be Academy 35mm.

The director must not be credited.

Furthermore I swear as a director to refrain from personal
taste. I am no longer an artist. I swear to refrain from
creating a 'work', as I regard the instant as more important
than the whole. My supreme goal is to force the truth out of my
characters and settings. I swear to do so by all the means
available and at the cost of any good taste and any aesthetic
considerations.

In 1995 a collective of Danish directors, including Lars von Trier
and Thomas Vinterberg, established the manifesto above to govern
the manner in which their films were to be shot. Dogme 95 - The
Vow of Chastity has already resulted in two interesting
films. Both were shown at the London Film Festival 1998, von
Trier's Idiots and Vinterberg's Festen.

The Dogme film No. 1 is Vinterberg's
Festen. Before the title sequence the Dogme
manifesto certificate is showed with the number of the
film. Central to the plot is the 60th birthday party of
Helge, the father of four children. The eldest son Christian
reveals the dark secrets of his childhood to the assembled
guests. With natural lighting, sound and hand-held video camera
Festen creates disorientating images as
disturbing as the content of the story. As the film is shot with a
digital video camera and blown up to 35 mm, the material is very
grainy on the big screen of a cinema theatre (on Video this
graininess is invisible). The aesthetic of the movie resembles the
aesthetic of the French New Wave, as hand-held camera equipment
was used extensively. Vinterberg sees the vow of chastity as
liberation from technical considerations and the limitations as
inspiration. But also the collective aspect appeals to
him. Festen was awarded with the Jury Prize in Cannes this
year.

The second film of the Dogme group is Idiots by Lars von Trier, who is already
famous for Breaking the
Waves(1996). A group of young people, who live in a large
house, pretend in the public to be idiots. They try to find their
'inner idiot'. By accident Karen gets involved in this group. In
the end it turns out that one of them really had the disease the
others were pretending and the group falls apart. Some serious
questions about society's attitude to the disabled arise when
watching the movie. The funny thing is the reactions to the idiots
rather than the idiots themselves. The film is very provocative
because of its sensitive subject. The movie seems to break with
the Dogme rules, as film music appears, but von Trier reveals in
an interview that the source of the music - the harmonica player -
was located behind the camera while shooting. So the sound is
always recorded with the image, however tricky this is to
achieve.

Filmmakers have often used the limitations placed upon them as
inspiration, but few have used formulated restraints on their own
freedom. However strictly the filmmakers really follow their own
rules, the existence of Dogme 95 led to increased public interest
in Danish cinema and provoked debate. The motivation behind the
vow of chastity could be something between a gimmick and a serious
attempt to produce a pure form of cinema but it had it's first
impacts: the Danish government has offered increased financial
support. State film funding will increase by 70 % over the next
four years.